Kaizer Chiefs interim coach Arthur Zwane has discussed Njabulo Ngcobo’s mistake against Golden Arrows and took full blame for the defeat.
The former Amakhosi player has taken over the reigns as interim coach alongside Dillon Sheppard after Stuart Baxter left the club.
However, the duo started with back-to-back defeats, losing 1-0 to Stellenbosch FC on Saturday before collecting a 2-1 loss in KwaZulu-Natal on Wednesday.
Zwane replaced Ngcobo in the 73rd minute with Daniel Cardoso – a decision the player seemingly didn’t like as he snubbed a handshake with Sheppard, which enraged goalkeeper Lee Baxter and led to the duo having a short clash.
However, Chiefs coach Zwane took the blame for what happened on the pitch.
“We saw that you know the energy levels of Rama were dropping and obviously we’re trying to manage players because the games are coming thick and fast,”
“We put Njabulo [Blom] to the right and then we brought in Kearyn [Baccus], so that we can be on the front foot as well in the middle and be able to control the middle. But the first touch, unfortunately, Kearyn, we were in attack and they decided to play the ball backwards when I expected him to play it forward.
“But yes, that was his decision and unfortunately that led to Siya [Ngezana] playing the ball to Njabulo [Ngcobo] and then Njabulo trying to – I don’t know…
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“I said at half-time ‘guys, the score is 0-0, forget about 1-0 now. It’s 0-0, let’s secure the ball, but let’s play the ball early forward. If we are opening straight-forward’. Even Beza [Brandon Petersen], I told him to do that.
“Unfortunately, they got a goal from our mistake. It was a giving. Then, I think now the game was even from there.
“We give them hope that they can score the second goal, and then did score the second goal from our mistake again. The ball is played from a dead ball situation and none of our defenders moved to try and clear the ball and they got first to the ball.
“So we give the game away here. Second half, we showed no character and we tried obviously to to give other players like the opportunity. Why? Because we’ve got a game again on Saturday. [Leonardo] Castro you could see he was tired. And other players were tired.
“But unfortunately we gave this game away and I take the responsibility as the coach. Maybe I could have taken other decisions. But yeah, I think we can learn from this, even from the mistakes that we made today, we can learn from them and be a better team going forward.”
Chiefs return to action on Saturday when they will host Cape Town City in their second rescheduled fixture.
